UK Release Date: 25-02-2008
Price: £19.99
UK Certificate: PG
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Country: GB
Distributor: Paramount Home Entertainmnet

The darker recesses of Faerie are never too dark in this adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel. A spirit of whimsy predominates throughout, from the avuncular tones of Sir Ian McKellen’s opening narrative voice-over, or the ongoing chorus of ghostly brothers tut-tutting at their latest scheming sibling’s death, to Robert De Niro’s camp Captain Shakespeare, coming out to the strains of the Can-Can.

The screenplay by Jane Goldman (Mrs Jonathan Ross and presenter of Jane Goldman Investigates) and writer and director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) retains the genuine English eccentricity of the source material, perhaps partly explaining why it struggled to top the American box office. Which is a shame, because unlike the threadbare exposition that was unable to display the substantial themes in The Golden Compass, or the mega-budget marketing machine still unable to mask the threadbare substance of the entire Harry Potter franchise, Stardust has a distinct, Victoriana-laden charm. Decked out in enchanting production values, the ‘real’ England – from which shop boy Tristan (Charlie Cox) sets out to bring back a fallen star to win the love of Sienna Miller’s vapid village beauty Victoria – is hardly less magical than the fantastical Stormhold he discovers beyond the alternative world portal of ‘The Wall’. Only the witches’ fireworks, with their look of CG over-familiarity, are in danger of breaking the spell the rest of the film casts.

Like George Lucas, Gaiman knows his Joseph Campbell, whose The Power of Myth has fuelled many a fantasy purveyor; but unlike Lucas, Gaiman knows Campbell as a constantly evolving writer with a graphic imagination knows him, not as a repetitive film maker who can’t write. In what is essentially a chivalric quest tale in which the boy becomes a man and the magical artefact is love, the characters’ names are studded with mythical references: from the wicked witch and child-murdering Lamia of Michelle Pfeiffer to Kate Magowan’s enslaved princess Una (whose namesake is representative of Truth in Spencer’s The Faerie Queene) to Tristan and his love prize, the living star Yvaine (Clare Danes), whose pure heart is sought by goodies and baddies alike. Add to this a host of familiar small screen UK faces (Mark Williams’s goat-like Billy is memorably bizarre), Ricky Gervais’s stand-up turn as lightning bolt trader Ferdy the Fence, Peter O’Toole’s casually homicidal king and Robert De Niro in a dress on a cloud-sailing Steampunk pirate ship, and there is enough layered fun to appeal to children and adults alike.

The DVD doesn’t come with a particularly extravagant host of special features, but Stardust doesn’t need them.

And when the breathless pace – and unmistakeable gear change grinding of a deus ex machina at the end – allows, it reveals a lot more going on. It’s a film more than worthy of its name.